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Laying workers
and since I only have one hive so far, I am way up that well known crick without a paddle!

Q1. how soon do I start putting the laying worker bees in a new split from a good hive with a new, good, queen? Best way?

Q2.If I give the LW hive a frame of good brood with a good swarm cell, do you think they will raise that queen successfully? They keep trying on their own already.

Ok, so I have a queen coming soon. marked of course. And I am going to put her in a healthy split an aquaintence is kindly giving me. new hive.

What to do with the old hive? I will probably use a lot of the pollen and honey for the split. I want the old hive bees to contribute to the new hive. How soon can I start combining and donating the older foragers to the new hive?
What would you suggest? Put the new hive in the old one's place and shake 'em out front?
How soon?

Also, I did read in a bee book (don't ask which one) that a "false queen" is a laying worker that acts just like a queen, but "laying workers" aren't quite that good, and the hive will have "charged" queen cells.

If I give my bad lw hive a frame of brood with some swarm cells, will they successfull raise that queen or is that a crap shoot?

When your new queen gets there just take the frames out of the hive and shake ALL the bees off of them onto the grass. Put the frames back in the hive with the new queen. Any laying workers will be lost in the grass. This is a much better solution than splitting them and doing a bunch of manipulations.

I have done this for laying workers:
Take the hive boxes off of the bottom board. Take a box with frames, no bees, and place it on the bottom board. You can use the frames that you already have drawn, just brush off all of the bees. Place a double screen board on top of the bottom box.
Place the hive boxes with all of you bees above this.
Make sure you have an entrance/ exit for the upper box.
Within a few days all of the foragers(most of the bees now) will be in the bottom box, no laying workers here.
When your queen comes, take the remaining bees in the top box, above the screen and shake them out about 100 ft from the hive.
Place your queen cage in the hive and let them take over, just like with a new package.

Mountaincamp:
I am unsure of the advantage to this procedure?
Why allow the foragers access to the bottom super and then shake the remaining bees off?
I may have missed something so please clarify for me.

Less bees to shake. With the foragers in the bottom box you only have to shake off the nurse bees. If you've never shaken out an entire hive the importance is lost on you, but once you have 50,000 bees in the air you will understand why it was worth the effort to not have 100,000 bees in the air.

I don't think shaking gets rid of the laying worker, but it does seem to disorient them enough that they will be more likely to accept the new queen.

They can not raise a queen without being supplied an egg or newly hatched larva.
You could put a frame with some eggs in the bottom box after a few days when most of the bees have moved down.
I would not use a screen board then, I would completely isolate the two boxes.
It would most likely work.
But, it will take a month or more before that queen is laying and and two months or more before you will see new foragers from the hive.

Getting a new queen in and laying will be a lot faster and mean the hive has a better chance to make it.

In your case, you do not have a choice. You will have to order a queen and install her.

Right, I was thinking if I did that then I wouldn't need to do another split later because either way I want at least 2 hives going into next year.
I am getting a new queen w/ a split now anyway. Just thought if they would then I wouldn't combine them now and worry about splitting later.

Neither of the two hive bodies will be able to raise a queen without fertilized eggs from another good queen.
If you want two colonies by this fall, then you will need to get a queen in quickly, get her laying well.
Wait till you have some frames of capped brood. Order another queen. Remove several frames of capped brood and nurse bees place in a new hive and install your queen.
I do not know how strong your queenless hive still is, but the numbers are going to drop, before they start building up again. If you have a laying worker(s), they have been queenless for awhile and that means lost new bee production, while the current foragers are working themselves to death.
Like all of bee keeeping it revolves around the weather and your climate. You can most likely still get enough population to be able to do a split and make your second hive.
But, watch them closely.

I have a similar question that doesn't seem to have been answerd yet: If you have a suspected laying worker hive (I have one where 90% of capped brood is bullet shapped, no queen or queen cells found), can you add a frame w/ eggs from a strong colony and expect them to raise a new queen?

I did this last weekend and I'm hoping it will save this hive...I plan on checking into it tomorrow and hope to see some queen cells!!

&gt;I have a similar question that doesn't seem to have been answerd yet: If you have a suspected laying worker hive (I have one where 90% of capped brood is bullet shapped, no queen or queen cells found), can you add a frame w/ eggs from a strong colony and expect them to raise a new queen?

Sometimes. Sometimes you can introduce a queen. Sometimes they kill her. Sometimes you can put a queen cell in and they will let it emerge. Somtimes they tear it down.

I think a lot of the variables depend on the hormomes (pheromones) of the laying worker and the workers' response to them.

The only surfire solution I know of to laying workers only works if you have other hives and that is to shake them all out in front of the other hives and do a split later.

In my experience most everything else falls into the "sometimes it works" category.

I have introduced queens and had it work and had it fail.

I have done newspaper combines with a queenright nuc and had it work and had it fail. But it succeeds more often than a queen introduction.

The only surefire thing that I haven't had fail (besides the shake out) is to put the queenright nuc on a double screen board for a few days and THEN do a newspaper combine, but then again, I may have just been lucky with this so far.

Update: Sorry for the delay, I've been dealing with computer issues and couldn't get back on-line.

Anyway, in the 2 hives I discussed above I added one frame of brood, larvae and eggs from strong colonies. 6 days went by for one of the hives and 10 for the other since I did this frame swap. I checked them and found approximately 4 queen cells in each hive (both had one swarm, and 3 - 4 supercedure). All of thes queen cells were open and had visible white stuff (larvae or royal jelly, or both??)

Both hives may have laying workers since they have mainly capped drone brood.

Since they did construct queen cells, are both of these hives on their way to new queens? Or, later, will a laying worker come by and tear down/kill any queen cells she finds capped?

&gt;I checked them and found approximately 4 queen cells in each hive (both had one swarm, and 3 - 4 supercedure). All of thes queen cells were open and had visible white stuff (larvae or royal jelly, or both??)

Sounds good.

&gt;Both hives may have laying workers since they have mainly capped drone brood.

Or a failing or poorly bred queen.

&gt;Since they did construct queen cells, are both of these hives on their way to new queens?

I think so.

&gt;Or, later, will a laying worker come by and tear down/kill any queen cells she finds capped?